


The Girl

by TalesOfOnyxBats



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23792371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalesOfOnyxBats/pseuds/TalesOfOnyxBats
Summary: Bellatrix comforts a distressed Azula.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	The Girl

The stands in the corner of the room, leaning heavily against the wall. Bellatrix watches her slump against the wallpaper and sink to the floor, gripping her head in her hands. She is a small thing, a delicate and dainty girl. But a girl with a wicked edge to her. The girl’s grip on her head tightens, her body wracked with trembles. 

Bellatrix peers at her with pity…

No. 

She looks at her with empathy. 

She knows that stance well. Knows the inner turmoil. The relentless unrest. It is the very sort that compels her to coax screams and wails just to drown out the ones in her head. The ones that plague and torment her mercilessly. 

Once upon a time, she had bunched herself up in a corner and cried until her world faded to black. Once upon a time, she let the voices victimize and weaken her. The girl in the corner is somewhat different; she doesn’t cry. But the look on her face is twisted in fear and desperation. A yearning for silence and peace of mind. 

Soon the voices grow too loud, or perhaps it is only a single, particularly vivid hallucination, whatever it may be, if finally overwhelms her enough to let out a scream. At first it has clear diction, a harsh, “leave me alone!” But then she breaks off into something more desperate and incoherent. 

It is just the sort of display that has Bellatrix giddy with glee, but this time the euphoria never takes hold. 

It might be that the girl reminds her too much of herself, years before Azkaban reaped whatever was left of her humanity and sanity. 

But it must not have sapped her of ever little ounce of it because she eventually approaches the shrieking girl. Not at first, but after the girl looks up. She meets Bellatrix’s gaze with exhausted and dismal eyes. The gold of them is vivid and piercing. She squeezes them shut and Bellatrix catches the first hitched breath as the girl fights off tears. Her fingers dig into her hairline, drawing four fine blossoms of blood. Bellatrix can’t fight away the prickles of adrenaline.

She very nearly gives in--how delightful it would be to pull those teeny gashes wider. To scratch her own nails down the girl’s cheek. Bellatrix’s lips curl into the faintest smile as the girl whimpers softly to herself. 

As quickly as it had come on, the thrill is lost. 

The witch curse the child for resurfacing memories that she has long buried. 

She finds herself a seat net to the girl and takes hold of her before she realizes what she is doing. She is quivering much more intensely than Bellatrix had initially gauged. The girl peers up at her and, with the slightest tremble of her lip, says, “you’re...real?” 

Bellatrix nods. 

The girl swallows. “Who are you?” 

“Someone nobody should get too close to…” Bellatrix replies. 

And yet, almost definitely, the girl seems to nuzzle closer. Bellatrix frowns, she doesn’t know what exactly she has gotten herself into. She certainly isn’t one for tender gestures, and yet she finds herself stroking the girl’s hair as she more freely weeps, the sound of it is muffled by the cloth she buries her face in. 

She is such a small thing. Small but with a grip like steel. Bellatrix isn’t sure that she’d be able to pry the girl from her if she tried. 

“What are you crying for?” 

“I don’t want to be here anymore.” 

“I can help you with that, if you please.” Bellatrix offers, much too readily. She poises her wand at the girl’s throat. 

“No.” The girl say. Her voice holds a certain power to it, an authority. “I mean that I don’t want to be  _ here _ .” She gestures at the asylum rags that poorly fit the body they excessively drape over.

Bellatrix clicks her tongue. “No one wants to be here…” But she’ll take it over the hell that was Azkaban. “How’s this? I won’t put you out of your misery if you don’t tell them that I’ve stolen my wand back.” 

The girl gives a haughty but amused sniff, “your wand?” She quirks a brow.” 

Bellatrix cringes to herself, she has forgotten that they have transferred her several dimensions away from her own. She can very well try to explain it to the girl--she gets the sense that the girl has a mind that can wrap itself around the concept--instead she says in a semi song-song, “they have me here for a reason.”

The girl stares at her hands. Around them are heavy cuffs.Cuffs that dig into her hands at such an angle it must be hard for her to move them right. A similar cuff presses into spaces along her spine. “They took my fire. I can’t steal that back.” Her expression seems to dim further. 

“But I can.” Bellatrix declares. 

“Then do it.” It holds the same authority as her other demand, but there is a desperation behind it. A desperation that Bellatrix pleasures herself in exploiting, at least a little. 

“You tell me what you’re crying about and I’ll get you your fire back.” 

At a spark of hope retched away so quickly, the girl goes completely quiet and seems to retreat further into her own mind. Further and further until she is so distant that Bellatrix thinks she has lost her entirely. 

Bellatrix sighs.The girl clearly isn’t the pleading and begging sort and she gets a feeling that the girl won’t scream for anything but whatever had been creating ruckus in her head. She is, Bellatrix decides, no fun at all. 

“Fine.” She crosses her arms. “Keep your secrets.” She draws out her wand and taps the cuffs one by one. They clatter to the floor.

The girl perks up again. She pushes away from Bellatrix and lets a crackle of blue flames erupt in her palms. 

“I’ve never seen fire like that.” Bellatrix admits. “Seen it in green, I think in pink once, but never blue.” 

“You’ve seen green fire?” The girl tilts her head. 

Somehow Bellatrix finds herself prideful that she has managed to capture the girl’s attention. So she nods. “I’ve seen many things and perhaps you’ll see them too, when we break out of this place.” She has been planning to do it alone, but curiosity has an allure. She has already gotten herself invested in this girl’s story, she wishes to hear the rest of it. “What do you say, dear?”

The girl ponders it. “I suppose that it will be easier to manage if I have some help.”

“Delightful!” Bellatrix gives a gleeful series of claps. 

She doesn’t think too much about it, but she thinks that it would do her well to have someone listen to her story. 

Someone who might understand it. 


End file.
